


Mercy of the Fallen

by gabolange



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: Episode Related, Episode Tag, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 14:09:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10439397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: Four conversations on family and hope, set during 6.04.





	

**Author's Note:**

> 6.04 was an episode with so much potential for so many characters, much of which went unrealized. This is an attempt to fill in some of the blanks.
> 
> Thanks to pellucid for the beta. All errors are my own.

***

“Dad,” Timothy says after a long moment. “Why didn’t you and Mummy have other kids after me?”

Timothy wants this to be a man-to-man chat, his father’s honesty and trust, and Patrick wishes he could give it to his son. But he hardly knows the answer to the boy’s question.

Tim had been born in 1947, an unexpected product of Patrick’s relieved return from war and Northfield, a hopeful beacon of a new life to come after the horrors of the past. Patrick remembers Marianne, miserable in the last month of pregnancy, swearing six ways to Sunday that she would never do this again before reconsidering her opinion after Timothy was born. He watched her count fingers and toes, kiss the baby’s puffy cheeks, and revel in his first sneeze, his first hiccup.

But he remembers, too, how much she struggled in those first months, with a colicky baby who wouldn’t sleep and a husband who could offer no help beyond platitudes on his way out the door. He was gone so much then--he remembers missing more of Tim’s infancy than anything else--establishing his practice, delivering too many babies to count, slowly laying the foundations for the NHS in Poplar.

They had lived such separate lives, he and Marianne, meeting in the evenings over supper and schoolwork, sharing stories of friends and colleagues that the other knew only superficially, nodding to demonstrate a practiced attention. In retrospect, he wonders if she ever found that wearing, but he doesn’t remember either of them questioning their managed spheres. 

Indeed, Patrick couldn’t say, now, if Marianne had wanted more children. It simply hadn’t happened and he doesn’t recall either of them minding. Like so many other things, they hadn’t talked about it in the time they had, and then they had been out of time.

“I don’t really know, Tim,” he says. 

“Oh,” Tim says.

Patrick turns to face his son. “I know that’s a sorry answer,” he says. “But sometimes that’s just how things work out.” 

He wonders how much Tim remembers of his mother, or thinks he does. He had been five when Marianne had first fallen ill and Patrick suspects any memories Tim has from before her illness have faded. Shelagh once described her memories of her mother as mostly feeling, now so many years removed, with few clear snapshots that she couldn’t truly say were real. “But,” she had whispered, “I know she loved me. And Tim, he knows, too.”

He loved her for that assurance, but he thought then and thinks now that there must be times when having so little to hold on to had to be impossibly inadequate. 

Timothy pulls at the paper on the beer bottle. “I know,” he says. “But you and Mummy were happy.”

He phrases it as a statement, but Patrick can hear the question, the way Tim seeks reassurance that the sense of contentment he remembers from his childhood is neither imagined nor misremembered. And it isn’t, Patrick knows. Coming home to Marianne was the best part of every day he shared with her, and they strove to make their home a happy place for their boy even in the later days of her illness. Patrick mourned her deeply, still does sometimes, especially in those moments when Tim is excited and grinning, because his son’s smile belongs to his mother. 

But there are some things that despite Timothy’s hope for honesty, Patrick cannot share, lest he break the compact to keep Marianne’s memory sacrosanct for his son. Perhaps one day Tim will see what Patrick will not say: that it is Shelagh who has taught him the best of what marriage can be. Her insistence that they share their deepest thoughts and darkest moments, her steadfast and absolute partnership--Patrick had no idea, before, that he could find so much joy in intimacy with another person.

For now, Patrick says, “Yes, we were.” 

Tim purses his mouth and sips at his beer. “And you and Mum are happy.” 

Patrick can hear the underlying adolescent complaint about mushy stuff and the mere contemplation of the specifics of the impending baby sibling, but this time there is no question. His quiet confidence matches Patrick’s. 

“Yes,” Patrick says. Or they would be, if Shelagh were home, singing Angela to sleep and fussing at Timothy to do his chores. She hasn’t been gone long and she will be home soon enough, he knows, but already the rhythms of their lives have been upset by her absence. He is only grateful that it is temporary.

“I know,” Tim says. He worries at the bottle in his hands. Patrick suspects he doesn’t like the beer very much and stifles a smile at that. Timothy is quiet and serious, though, as he asks, “But if you are happy, and happy with me and Angela, why is this baby such a big deal?”

He probably should have anticipated this question, but it catches Patrick off guard. “Tim,” he says, stalling.

Tim rolls his eyes. “I mean, I want the baby to be okay, too,” he says. He puts the beer bottle down on the side table and turns in the chair, resting his body against the back. “And Mum.”

“Mum will be fine,” Patrick says, though he can catalog the many ways he might be wrong. He refuses to think of it now, refuses to let Tim think of it at all. He pushes forward. “And the baby--Tim, we just don’t know yet. We have to wait and see.”

“I know,” Tim says. “I just…” He trails off and shrugs, reaching again for his drink. Patrick looks at his son, slouched in the armchair, looking for a moment so much younger than his age. These are such awkward years, Patrick thinks, caught between childhood and adulthood with neither fitting easily. 

“Tim,” Patrick says, firmly, “we are happy. With you and Angela and the way things are. You see it every day.” He takes a breath and cuts off whatever rejoinder Tim might make. “This baby, it’s just adding joy.”

Timothy doesn’t respond to that and starts to pull at the paper on his beer bottle. 

Patrick tries again. “When we got married, Mum wanted to have children, you know that.” Tim doesn’t look up, but Patrick can see that he is listening. “And people want children for all sorts of reasons, or sometimes they don’t but have them anyway. But Mum--.” He tries to think of how to explain the depth of Shelagh’s longing to their boy, who had been too young then to fully understand her grief at her barrenness. “--for Mum, I think it was something she had wanted and then shunted aside for a very long time.” 

Tim’s mouth quirks, as if he is going to make a crack about nuns and babies, but he stays quiet.

Patrick continues, “And then all of a sudden, she felt like she could have it. And when you’re faced with that kind of possibility, that kind of hope, having it taken away is devastating.” He remembers Shelagh sobbing in his arms, frustrated at her body and furious at herself for wishing for more when she already had so much.

“And we figured it out, Tim,” Patrick says. “We have you and Angela, and Mum went back to work and after a while, we both forgot that we had wanted this at all.” 

“But?” Tim queries softly.

Patrick smiles. “But hope is a funny thing,” he says. Funny, too, how it snuck up on him as much as Shelagh; she gave him a drawing and the future he imagined suddenly expanded to include another face at their table, another cause for delight. He has tried and failed to stop himself from picturing Shelagh heavily pregnant and scowling, or with a baby at her breast in the early dawn hours. 

“And,” Patrick says, “getting a chance at something you gave up on, even if you didn’t think you wanted it anymore, that’s a powerful kind of hope.”

Their family is all close calls and second chances, the unexpected realization of nearly impossible dreams. Patrick thinks that when Tim is older and can view the arc of his life, of his father’s life, he might see that. But for now, it seems like this explanation is enough, as his son nods. 

“I get it, Dad,” he says.

**

Trixie finds Tom sitting on the bench behind Nonnatus House. She assumes he must be waiting for Barbara to come back from a call, though given Mrs. Makepeace’s previous labor, he could be here all night. She sits beside him.

“Hello Trixie,” he says.

“Hello Tom,” she replies. It is peculiar, the way they have become friends now. Trixie isn’t friends with any of her other former beaus and wouldn’t have wanted to be, but she is glad to have stumbled into this comfort with Tom. She is even more glad to be Barbara’s friend, to help her navigate this engagement and this life that she will build, one that Trixie can see now would never have suited her.

Mostly, Trixie is glad to be home, even if home has brought more change than she can wrap her head around. The work they have to do to fix what Sister Ursula has broken would be hard enough without Patsy headed to Hong Kong or Sister Mary Cynthia off God knows where. Not to mention Phyllis’ casual aside that Mrs. Turner was in hospital with threatened miscarriage; Trixie had almost dropped her tea. “Miscarriage? What? Shelagh’s pregnant?” she had said before recovering her decorum.

“Yes,” Sister Julienne had said, rising from the table. “I can assure you, no one was more surprised than she.” 

Then again, Shelagh and Doctor Turner have been surprising them all for years. No reason to stop now. 

They are shorthanded and, Trixie thinks, a little downtrodden. It will take some time for all of them to pull through the upheavals of the last few months. There is at least one problem she can solve more immediately, at least, because here is Tom, looking for all the world like the fate of the world--or at least Poplar--rests on his shoulders. She bumps his arm. “You doing okay over there?”

Tom looks skyward. “I don’t know, Trixie. I want to say yes, but I just don’t know.”

“Are you worried about the adoption?” Trixie asks.

“Not worried,” Tom says. “Just wondering about why people make the decisions they do.”

Trixie laughs lightly, trying to lighten the somber mood. “Isn’t that your forte?”

Tom smiles and ignores her attempt at levity. “No,” he says. “And in this case, I don’t even think I understand what God wants. It seems unnatural to separate a mother and child over something as simple as money. And yet, it would ease two families’ suffering. Or, at least, I think it would. Or maybe it would cause more.”

He is rambling and Trixie puts a hand on his arm to stop his words. “Tom,” she says, interrupting him. “Do you know why your parents adopted you?”

“I think they couldn’t have children,” he says. “I assume, at least. I don’t have any siblings.”

For a man who spends so much time considering the lives of his parishioners, it is a surprisingly unstudied response. Apparently, unmarried curates, unlike unmarried midwives, have little cause to consider the many ways people build families or why. Trixie wonders if Tom ever considered that his parents had to make a choice to adopt him, where a biological baby could be merely a happy--or unhappy--accident? 

Instead she asks, “And did having you make them happy?”

“I like to think so,” Tom says, twisting the corner of his mouth as he considers her question. “I never thought much about it. They’re just my parents.”

Trixie laughs; his answer gives away the truth of his contented childhood even more than a true affirmation would. There are so many things she never shared with Tom about her family, and never will, but she wants him to understand how much of a privilege it must have been to grow up in a home like his. She says, “That’s it, though. You had a normal, healthy childhood. You argued about cleaning up your toys and being home before dark. Didn’t you?”

He pauses a moment, staring out into the night. “Yes.”

Trixie looks at his profile, the still-unconvinced look on his face. She continues, “And your parents were there when you finished school and when you were ordained, and they’re bursting with excitement to meet Barbara.”

“Yes,” Tom says. Trixie never met Tom’s mother, but she suspects she encouraged his kind nature, taught him to think of others before he thought of himself. She sees in Tom the work of doting parents, who will be delighted by the charitable, loving girl he is going to marry. 

Trixie can’t imagine what someone like Tom would have been like being raised in an orphanage. Perhaps he would have found the fortitude to survive, but it would have come at the expense of the gentleness that makes him a good curate and, she thinks, a good son.

“My point, Tom,” Trixie continues, “is that while we can all wish there were no unwanted children in the world, no circumstances like yours or Marnie Wallace’s, it isn’t giving birth to someone that makes them a mother. It’s giving a child a home and a space to grow. It’s making them do their chores and feeding them soup when they’re sick and celebrating when they get married.”

Trixie doesn’t wish she had been more loved, because her father’s love was so tempestuous that more of it would have been impossible to bear. She doesn’t wish for anything, really, because every day she draws on all she didn’t have and gives it to her patients and her friends, building herself the life she wants.

Tom doesn’t respond and Trixie wonders if Barbara is more tolerant of his melancholic moments. “You know I’m right,” Trixie says, pretending to scold.

“Aren’t you always right?” Tom asks, not as lightly as he should.

“Yes,” Trixie says. “But you don’t even have to ask me. I’m certainly not an expert on all of this. The Turners’ little girl is adopted, ask them.”

He starts at that before smiling a little. “I know,” Tom says. “I think I had forgotten, but I did know.”

Trixie wishes for a cigarette, just so she could flick the ash to make a statement. She says, “Well, isn’t that the point? It’s never mattered to any of us, and certainly not to them, where Angela came from. She’s their daughter.”

“And what about her birth mother?” Tom asks. “What about mine?”

Trixie lays a hand on his shoulder. It is the crux of the matter, but she doesn’t have an answer for him, because, she thinks, there isn’t one. “And what about Marnie Wallace, trying to decide what’s right?” Trixie shrugs, and she doesn’t mean to be unkind with the gesture. “I don’t know, Tom. I can’t imagine having to give up a child. I think it must be the hardest thing in the world.”

“But?” Tom prompts.

“But nothing,” Trixie says. “You hope that they know their children are happy, or will be. But I don’t know. That’s the thing of it. You may never know.”

Tom laughs a little, more of a cough and a shrug than anything else. He doesn’t respond to that, but Trixie doesn’t know what he could say. It isn’t easy, the untangling the threads of where you came from and how you turned into the person you are. Harder still to start to put them back together. Trixie gives Tom a little credit for helping start her down that path; perhaps, today, she has returned the favor as much it is owed. She rises from the bench. 

“Trixie,” Tom says as she turns to go. “It is good to have you back.” 

Everything is sideways and Trixie has only barely begun putting things to rights. But it is good to be home.

** 

In the hours after Mrs. Venables departs the ward, it is uncommonly quiet. The women doze or thumb through their magazines, lost, Delia thinks, in the thoughts that the previous day’s difficulties could be their own. 

She can’t keep the images out of her head. She had seen diagrams in her textbooks and Phyllis had made study cards for each gestational milestone, but Delia had not been prepared for a baby the size of an ear of corn to look so obviously human, to be something that was so close to being someone’s beloved child. It was a girl, or, Delia supposes, would have been. 

She wonders: was this baby big enough to merit burial in a pauper’s coffin, or did it get thrown out with the morning’s rubbish? Would scheduling the cervical cerclage a day or two earlier have made a difference? Was it Mrs. Venables’ fate to suffer the premature death of even more children? How did Sister Douglas stay so calm?

Nonnatus House had been quiet when she had gone home after her shift, the others retired for the night. Delia had thought about making a racket in the kitchen to see if she could encourage sympathetic company, but it wasn’t the nurses’ shoulders she wanted to cry on, and she couldn’t have handled any platitudes from the nuns. She crept into bed late and left for her shift before breakfast.

But she wishes now she had talked to someone, because Mrs. Venables’ screams echo in her head and Delia has no idea how to quiet them.

“Nurse Busby,” Mrs. Turner calls softly across the room. In the nurses’ small changing room, Sister Douglas had shared that Mrs. Turner had received good news. One of the lucky ones, she had said. Mrs. Turner certainly looks content, though her brow is furrowed over an unseen concern Delia hurries to assuage.

It is not until Mrs. Turner hands her a paper handkerchief that Delia realizes she has been crying at her station. “Sit down, dear,” Mrs. Turner says quietly, gesturing to the chair at her bedside. Delia sits and stares at her hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I don’t mean to be unprofessional.” She hopes the other women can’t see or aren’t paying attention, but thinks that might be too much to ask in such a small space.

“This was your first stillborn delivery?” Mrs. Turner asks, her voice gentle. Delia knows Mrs. Turner has a reputation as an excellent midwife, one of the people they can turn to when deliveries turn difficult, though she has yet to witness it in person. 

“Yes,” Delia says. 

Mrs. Turner nods. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I know how hard that can be.”

Delia sniffs, grateful that Mrs. Turner hasn’t said that it gets easier. Delia hopes that even if she is more composed or more capable in her future career that days like yesterday are never easy. “I just wish I knew what to say,” Delia says. “I wish I knew how to help her.”

Mrs. Turner smiles softly. “In my experience,” she says, “if you approach these situations with compassion and honesty, the words will follow.”

It sounds like one of the platitudes Delia didn’t want from the nuns--though she’s heard that Mrs. Turner used to be an nun, so maybe she picked it up from them--and Delia frowns. “Beg your pardon,” she says, “but that feels so inadequate.”

“Of course it is,” Mrs. Turner says, glancing at the empty bed behind Delia before bringing her hands to rest protectively over her distended belly. “In situations like Gloria’s, there is very little you can say in the moment that will help other than acknowledging the mother’s grief and answering her questions.” 

Delia wants to protest that surely there must be more, anything, but she knows Mrs. Turner would tell her if there was. Perhaps Delia’s frustration at this answer shows on her face, because Mrs. Turner continues, saying, “Coming to terms with something like this takes time, Nurse Busby. Some people never do. You offer the comfort you can and do your most not to make it worse.”

“Make it worse?” The words tumble out of Delia’s mouth before she can stop them, though even as they do, she can imagine. Her mum so often made things more difficult in her quest to do what she thought was best after Delia’s injury. Even the best nurses are not immune from that, she knows.

Mrs. Turner’s mouth quirks up at that. “It isn’t that we give bad advice,” she says. “It’s that you don’t believe it is true until you live it.” Her smile gentles and she continues, “I could tell Gloria that there are other ways to have a family--that I found other ways to have a family--but right now, all she would hear is that I have something she doesn’t.” 

The look on Mrs. Turner’s face tightens then, the barest shadow behind her kind smile. Delia wonders suddenly if someone has said something to Mrs. Turner about how she already has children and so shouldn’t be too concerned about this one; she wonders if any of the women on the ward have thought it as they’ve seen her lanky teenage son, overheard her husband give updates on their little girl. 

Delia has seen women clamoring for the contraceptive pill so they can have a better guarantee against future pregnancies, for whom an unexpected baby later in life would be a frustrating burden. And then she has this patient, for whom it is a welcome blessing she is fighting to hold on to. The words that would be a balm to each in the event of an unsuccessful pregnancy would be so very different. 

It occurs to Delia that she is asking Mrs. Turner to give professional advice about a situation she might face as a mother, that despite the recent good news, it could easily be Mrs. Turner facing the same terrible moment as Mrs. Venables. 

And Mrs. Turner is handling it with grace than Delia thinks she could summon if asked to talk to her colleagues about the most intimate challenges of life. Delia wonders at Mrs. Turner’s generosity in this moment, the way she initiated a conversation about something that must be so difficult, and for what? To ease Delia’s concerns? 

Delia could laugh, because, oh, she should never have asked these questions of a patient, especially not this patient, no matter Mrs. Turner’s expertise and that she invited the discussion. It was inappropriate, no matter that Mrs. Turner’s composure hasn’t wavered, that she seems more worried about Delia in this moment than her own health. That is luck and practice, Delia thinks; perhaps one day Delia will be able to maintain her own equilibrium in the face of difficult days.

Delia is abruptly grateful that Mrs. Turner is soon to be discharged, given clearance to rest at home, because she can’t stomach the idea of being on duty if something were to go wrong. She still doesn’t know what she would have said to Mrs. Venables if given the chance. Delia suspects she will be replaying the horrible scene in her dreams for days to come. 

She dabs at her eyes with the paper handkerchief, which is shredding in her hands. Despite her intentions to end this conversation, Delia asks, “And how do we move past days like yesterday? As nurses?”

Mrs. Turner’s gaze is soft as she replies, but she offers no false reassurances. “That takes time, too, Nurse Busby,” she says. 

Perhaps another day, Delia will learn about how Mrs. Turner’s early days as a nurse, what professional experiences she is reflecting on to answer these questions. But not now, not here, with Mrs Venables’ loss so fresh and Mrs. Turner’s outcome so tenuous. She has asked too much already.

Delia nods, smoothing her hands over her uniform skirt. She should wash her face and get back to the many tasks Sister Douglas has set her for the day. And so she nods and rises to her feet. “Thank you, Mrs. Turner,” she says.

**

“Patrick, stop fussing and come here.” Since Shelagh arrived home this morning, her husband has done nothing but fidget, see-sawing between happiness and concern. “The temperature is fine. The children are asleep. I have everything I need except for you.” She holds out her hand, willing him to sit beside her after too many nights when he couldn’t.

He closes the dresser drawer and turns to her, a gentle smile on his features. He crosses the short distance and settles at her side. “I’m sorry,” he says.

She tucks herself against him, letting herself enjoy the cotton of his pajama shirt against her skin, the rise and fall of his chest under her cheek. He kisses her hair, then rests his face against the top of her head. Shelagh breathes in, feeling herself truly relax for the first time in weeks.

They sit like that for long minutes, content to simply be together. There was a time she could not have imagined this, the comfort she could find in another person’s gentle touch; now she can barely remember why she’d thought to eschew it or how she’d lived without it for so long. 

Shelagh wraps her Patrick’s pajama top around her fingers, breathing deeply. “I am so happy,” she says, almost a whisper. “But I am still so scared.”

“I know,” he says. “So am I.”

She had meant what she said to Timothy, that the intimate, daily knowledge of everything that could go wrong colors both of their perspectives. Shelagh doesn’t want to know what Patrick has seen when he has closed his eyes these long nights away, how much his subconscious weights imagined horror against the hope they both hold. He doesn’t have her faith, has nothing to cling to other than statistics and science, except now, perhaps, her presence beside him and the visible evidence of the child they have made.

Patrick shifts to stroke his fingers over her belly. She still hasn’t felt the baby move. She knows it is still early for a first pregnancy, knows that this is just another milestone to look forward to. But she can’t help but fear that she won’t reach it, that the next time they listen for the heartbeat, Patrick won’t be able to find it.

Her faith is as useless as his science. 

But somehow, contrary to all reason, they are here at this impossible point. She wonders at that, that God would give them this blessing when their cups were already so full. She knows she cannot love this baby any more than the children sleeping down the hall, who nearly bowled her over in their happiness to have her home.

She remembers the first time Tim called her Mum, the way he didn’t even notice as he complained about his chores while she was knocked nearly off her feet. She remembers Patrick placing Angela in her arms, how her heart swelled with a love that was both new and so very familiar, because her wonderful boy had taught it to her before she realized it had happened. 

And she treasures the way they had fought to embrace her before she was through the door, Angela’s little fingers tangling in her skirt while her brother stumbled to fold her into an awkward hug. 

But the baby, this slip of an idea she hadn’t been expecting and still barely believes is real, has started to nudge in beside them. She doesn’t need it, she knows now, but now that they have been given this chance, she wants so badly to see it through. 

Shelagh turns further into her husband’s embrace, pressing her face into his chest. Her glasses pinch the bridge of her nose, but she doesn’t care; she only wants the feel of his fingers combing through her hair, the press of his lips against the crown of her head.

Patrick obliges before taking a deep breath. He says, “When Nurse Douglas suggested I be the one to perform the auscultation, I couldn’t decide what would be worse. To have to tell you our baby hadn’t survived, or to not be there when you learned.”

Shelagh swallows, trying to quell the tears rising in her throat. Before she can say anything, Patrick continues, “But I decided that whatever happened, it would be better to be together.” He shifts her away from him slightly, just enough so he can tuck his finger under her chin and raise her head to meet his eyes. He looks at her with a familiar intensity that always makes her quaver. 

She tries to picture Mr. Kenley giving her the news that the baby had died, imagines dismissive commentary about bad luck and fast labor. She knows he is a good obstetrician or Patrick wouldn’t refer to him, but she thinks he could learn something in bedside manner from her husband. 

Patrick would have kissed away her tears, knows he will, if it should come to it. And she would have held his face between her hands as he cried with her. 

Shelagh hadn’t always been sure, before they adopted Angela, how invested he was in building their family. She knows now that he was trying, the best he knew how, to give her whatever she wanted. She hadn’t understood that the thing she needed most was his honesty, the open acknowledgement that she wasn’t alone in her want and fear.

Now, she sees the hope in his eyes as much as she feels the concern in his touch, the easy demonstration of a trust she values more than anything. He spreads his fingers across the thin fabric of her nightdress, holding the swell of her belly in his hand. “I didn’t think I would be giving you good news,” Patrick says. “I didn’t expect--.”

She shakes her head. “No,” she says, holding his gaze despite the tears leaking from the corners of her eyes. “I didn’t either. We had no reason to think--.” 

Her voice gives out. She has done it twice now, this waiting in hospital, trying to hold onto something she isn’t supposed to have. She remembers too well her terror of dying without being reconciled to him--not to God, but to this man she barely knew, who was not hers to lose.

The dread of the last few days and weeks has not lifted yet, may not for months to come. But this time, she had his presence at her side as often as he could manage, a balm to her memory and fear, and she has it now. 

Patrick strokes her cheek and she leans into his touch. “We do like to beat the odds,” he says gently. 

They have pulled through time and again. She doesn’t yet trust that this won’t be different, but there is nothing for it but time and prayer and the strength Patrick is offering her. And so she kisses him softly before tucking her head back against his chest, content to listen to his heartbeat as she falls asleep.

***


End file.
